Chapter LIV

Charles Dickens

Credits

George P. Landow created the Great Expectations Project as an experiment collaborative scholarship and learning with web-based texts that link together (1) the text of he novel, (2) previously publishd scholarly texts, encluding entire books, (3) illustrations, and (4) contemporary reviews, and (5) student-created annotations that take various forms, including essays, reading and discussion questions. This web version of the novel derives from the Project Gutenberg EBook version of the 1867 edition [EBook #1400], that “An Anonymous Volunteer” and David Widger created. Using much of their html, Landow reformatted and linked the text.

Unlike most of Dickens's novels, Great Expectations appeared without illustrations, but publishers on both sides of the Atlantic commissioned them for later editions. This web version of the novel contains illustrations by the following illustrators:

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind
blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
We had out pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my worldly
possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the
bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might return, were
questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my mind with them, for
it was wholly set on Provis’s safety. I only wondered for the passing
moment, as I stopped at the door and looked back, under what altered
circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever.

We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, as if
we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of course, I had
taken care that the boat should be ready and everything in order. After
a little show of indecision, which there were none to see but the two
or three amphibious creatures belonging to our Temple stairs, we went
on board and cast off; Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then about
high-water,—half-past eight.

Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and being
with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it had turned,
and row against it until dark. We should then be well in those long
reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is
broad and solitary, where the water-side inhabitants are very few, and
where lone public-houses are scattered here and there, of which we could
choose one for a resting-place. There, we meant to lie by all night.
The steamer for Hamburg and the steamer for Rotterdam would start from
London at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time
to expect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first;
so that, if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have
another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel.

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose
was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realize the condition in
which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air, the sunlight, the
movement on the river, and the moving river itself,—the road that ran
with us, seeming to sympathize with us, animate us, and encourage us
on,—freshened me with new hope. I felt mortified to be of so little use
in the boat; but, there were few better oarsmen than my two friends, and
they rowed with a steady stroke that was to last all day.

At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its present
extent, and watermen’s boats were far more numerous. Of barges, sailing
colliers, and coasting-traders, there were perhaps, as many as now;
but of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part
so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of scullers going here and
there that morning, and plenty of barges dropping down with the tide;
the navigation of the river between bridges, in an open boat, was a much
easier and commoner matter in those days than it is in these; and we
went ahead among many skiffs and wherries briskly.

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate Market with its
oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor’s Gate, and
we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here were the Leith, Aberdeen,
and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking immensely
high out of the water as we passed alongside; here, were colliers by the
score and score, with the coal-whippers plunging off stages on deck, as
counterweights to measures of coal swinging up, which were then rattled
over the side into barges; here, at her moorings was to-morrow’s steamer
for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice; and here to-morrow’s for
Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed. And now I, sitting in the
stern, could see, with a faster beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill
Pond stairs.

“Is he there?” said Herbert.

“Not yet."

“Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his signal?"

“Not well from here; but I think I see it.—Now I see him! Pull both.
Easy, Herbert. Oars!"

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board,
and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a black canvas
bag; and he looked as like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished.

“Dear boy!” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his
seat. “Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!"

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty
chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for the
moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood
and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the
figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as
is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality
of bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches out of her head; in
and out, hammers going in ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber,
clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships,
capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures
roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and
out,—out at last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might
take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them
over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind.

At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had
looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen none. We
certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we were not either
attended or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by any boat,
I should have run in to shore, and have obliged her to go on, or to
make her purpose evident. But we held our own without any appearance of
molestation.

He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural part
of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life he had
led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any of us. He
was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his
gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign country; he was not
disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no
notion of meeting danger half way. When it came upon him, he confronted
it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

“If you knowed, dear boy,” he said to me, “what it is to sit here
alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day
betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don’t know what it is."

“I think I know the delights of freedom,” I answered.

“Ah,” said he, shaking his head gravely. “But you don’t know it equal to
me. You must have been under lock and key, dear boy, to know it equal to
me,—but I ain’t a going to be low."

It occurred to me as inconsistent, that, for any mastering idea, he
should have endangered his freedom, and even his life. But I reflected
that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart from all the
habit of his existence to be to him what it would be to another man. I
was not far out, since he said, after smoking a little:—

“You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the world, I
was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be there, for
all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could
come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody’s head would be troubled about
him. They ain’t so easy concerning me here, dear boy,—wouldn’t be,
leastwise, if they knowed where I was."

“If all goes well,” said I, “you will be perfectly free and safe again
within a few hours."

“Well,” he returned, drawing a long breath, “I hope so."

“And think so?"

He dipped his hand in the water over the boat’s gunwale, and said,
smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:—

“Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be more quiet
and easy-going than we are at present. But—it’s a flowing so soft
and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes me think it—I was
a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no more see to the
bottom of the next few hours than we can see to the bottom of this river
what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide than
I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you see!"
holding up his dripping hand.

“But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,” said I.

“Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of that
there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of a Sunday tune. Maybe
I'm a growing a trifle old besides."

He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of
face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out of
England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he had been
in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some bottles of beer
into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted that I thought he would
be safest where he was, and he said. “Do you, dear boy?” and quietly sat
down again.

The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the
sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to lose
none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly well. By
imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more and more of the
nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower between the muddy
banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were off Gravesend. As our
charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely passed within a boat or
two’s length of the floating Custom House, and so out to catch the
stream, alongside of two emigrant ships, and under the bows of a large
transport with troops on the forecastle looking down at us. And soon
the tide began to slacken, and the craft lying at anchor to swing,
and presently they had all swung round, and the ships that were taking
advantage of the new tide to get up to the Pool began to crowd upon us
in a fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of
the tide now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and
mudbanks.

Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her drive
with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an hour’s rest
proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among some slippery
stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about.
It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a
dim horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great
floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed
stranded and still. For now the last of the fleet of ships was round
the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden,
with a brown sail, had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like
a child’s first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a
little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles stood crippled in the mud
on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy
stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck
out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building
slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.

We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder work
now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed and rowed and rowed
until the sun went down. By that time the river had lifted us a little,
so that we could see above the bank. There was the red sun, on the low
level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast deepening into black; and
there was the solitary flat marsh; and far away there were the rising
grounds, between which and us there seemed to be no life, save here and
there in the foreground a melancholy gull.

As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the full,
would not rise early, we held a little council; a short one, for clearly
our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could find. So,
they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for anything like a
house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for four or five dull miles. It
was very cold, and, a collier coming by us, with her galley-fire smoking
and flaring, looked like a comfortable home. The night was as dark by
this time as it would be until morning; and what light we had, seemed
to come more from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping
struck at a few reflected stars.

At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that
we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular
intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or
other of us was sure to start, and look in that direction. Here and
there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little
creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them
nervously. Sometimes, “What was that ripple?” one of us would say in a
low voice. Or another, “Is that a boat yonder?” And afterwards we would
fall into a dead silence, and I would sit impatiently thinking with what
an unusual amount of noise the oars worked in the thowels.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards ran
alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked up hard
by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light
to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty place enough, and I
dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers; but there was a good
fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to eat, and various
liquors to drink. Also, there were two double-bedded rooms,—"such as
they were,” the landlord said. No other company was in the house than
the landlord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the “Jack” of the
little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water
mark too.

With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came
ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder and boat-hook, and all
else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal by the
kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and Startop
were to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found the air as
carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to life; and there
were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the beds than I should have
thought the family possessed. But we considered ourselves well off,
notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not have found.

While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the
Jack—who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of shoes
on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and bacon, as
interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from the feet of
a drowned seaman washed ashore—asked me if we had seen a four-oared
galley going up with the tide? When I told him No, he said she must have
gone down then, and yet she “took up too,” when she left there.

“They must ha' thought better on’t for some reason or another,” said the
Jack, “and gone down."

“A four-oared galley, did you say?” said I.

“A four,” said the Jack, “and two sitters."

“Did they come ashore here?"

“They put in with a stone two-gallon jar for some beer. I'd ha' been
glad to pison the beer myself,” said the Jack, “or put some rattling
physic in it."

“Why?"

“I know why,” said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as if much mud
had washed into his throat.

“He thinks,” said the landlord, a weakly meditative man with a pale eye,
who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack,—"he thinks they was, what they
wasn’t ."

“I knows what I thinks,” observed the Jack.

“You thinks Custum 'Us, Jack?” said the landlord.

“I do,” said the Jack.

“Then you're wrong, Jack."

"AM I!"

In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence in
his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked into
it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put it on
again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he could
afford to do anything.

“Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then,
Jack?” asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.

“Done with their buttons?” returned the Jack. “Chucked 'em overboard.
Swallered 'em. Sowed 'em, to come up small salad. Done with their
buttons!"

“Don’t be cheeky, Jack,” remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy and
pathetic way.

“A Custum 'Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons,” said the Jack,
repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt, “when they
comes betwixt him and his own light. A four and two sitters don’t go
hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down with another, and both
with and against another, without there being Custum 'Us at the bottom
of it.” Saying which he went out in disdain; and the landlord, having no
one to reply upon, found it impracticable to pursue the subject.

This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The dismal wind
was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping at the shore, and
I had a feeling that we were caged and threatened. A four-oared galley
hovering about in so unusual a way as to attract this notice was an ugly
circumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had induced Provis to
go up to bed, I went outside with my two companions (Startop by this
time knew the state of the case), and held another council. Whether we
should remain at the house until near the steamer’s time, which would
be about one in the afternoon, or whether we should put off early in the
morning, was the question we discussed. On the whole we deemed it the
better course to lie where we were, until within an hour or so of the
steamer’s time, and then to get out in her track, and drift easily with
the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into the house and went
to bed.

I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well for a
few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house
(the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with noises that startled
me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I looked out of the
window. It commanded the causeway where we had hauled up our boat, and,
as my eyes adapted themselves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw
two men looking into her. They passed by under the window, looking at
nothing else, and they did not go down to the landing-place which I
could discern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction
of the Nore.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men going
away. But reflecting, before I got into his room, which was at the back
of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had had a harder day
than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I could
see the two men moving over the marsh. In that light, however, I soon
lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay down to think of the matter, and
fell asleep again.

We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together, before
breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen. Again our
charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very likely that the
men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, and that they had no
thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that it was so,—as, indeed,
it might easily be. However, I proposed that he and I should walk away
together to a distant point we could see, and that the boat should take
us aboard there, or as near there as might prove feasible, at about
noon. This being considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he
and I set forth, without saying anything at the tavern.

He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me on
the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I who was in danger,
not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very little. As we
approached the point, I begged him to remain in a sheltered place, while
I went on to reconnoitre; for it was towards it that the men had passed
in the night. He complied, and I went on alone. There was no boat off
the point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were there any
signs of the men having embarked there. But, to be sure, the tide was
high, and there might have been some footpints under water.

When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I
waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there we waited;
sometimes lying on the bank, wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving
about to warm ourselves, until we saw our boat coming round. We got
aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of the steamer. By that time
it wanted but ten minutes of one o'clock, and we began to look out for
her smoke.

But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon afterwards
we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they were coming on
at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity
of saying good by to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands
cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite dry, when I
saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under the bank but a little way
ahead of us, and row out into the same track.

A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer’s smoke,
by reason of the bend and wind of the river; but now she was visible,
coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep before the tide,
that she might see us lying by for her, and I adjured Provis to sit
quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered cheerily, “Trust to me,
dear boy,” and sat like a statue. Meantime the galley, which was very
skilfully handled, had crossed us, let us come up with her, and fallen
alongside. Leaving just room enough for the play of the oars, she kept
alongside, drifting when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or two when we
pulled. Of the two sitters one held the rudder-lines, and looked at us
attentively,—as did all the rowers; the other sitter was wrapped up,
much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some instruction
to the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in either boat.

Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was first,
and gave me the word “Hamburg,” in a low voice, as we sat face to face.
She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her peddles grew louder
and louder. I felt as if her shadow were absolutely upon us, when the
galley hailed us. I answered.

“You have a returned Transport there,” said the man who held the lines.
"That’s the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel Magwitch,
otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him to surrender,
and you to assist."

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew,
he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden stroke ahead,
had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were holding on to
our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great
confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us, and
heard the order given to stop the paddles, and heard them stop, but felt
her driving down upon us irresistibly. In the same moment, I saw the
steersman of the galley lay his hand on his prisoner’s shoulder, and saw
that both boats were swinging round with the force of the tide, and
saw that all hands on board the steamer were running forward quite
frantically. Still, in the same moment, I saw the prisoner start
up, lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of the
shrinking sitter in the galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the
face disclosed, was the face of the other convict of long ago. Still, in
the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white terror on it
that I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer,
and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink from under me.

It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand
mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that instant past, I was
taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop was there; but
our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.

He was taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles by John McLenan (1861)

What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing off of
her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not at first
distinguish sky from water or shore from shore; but the crew of the
galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling certain swift strong
strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking silently and
eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark object was seen in it,
bearing towards us on the tide. No man spoke, but the steersman held up
his hand, and all softly backed water, and kept the boat straight and
true before it. As it came nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, swimming,
but not swimming freely. He was taken on board, and instantly manacled
at the wrists and ankles.

The galley was kept steady, and the silent, eager look-out at the water
was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and apparently not
understanding what had happened, came on at speed. By the time she had
been hailed and stopped, both steamers were drifting away from us, and
we were rising and falling in a troubled wake of water. The look-out was
kept, long after all was still again and the two steamers were gone; but
everybody knew that it was hopeless now.

At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the tavern
we had lately left, where we were received with no little surprise. Here
I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch,—Provis no longer,—who
had received some very severe injury in the Chest, and a deep cut in the
head.

He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of the
steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The injury to
his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely painful) he thought
he had received against the side of the galley. He added that he did not
pretend to say what he might or might not have done to Compeyson, but
that, in the moment of his laying his hand on his cloak to identify him,
that villain had staggered up and staggered back, and they had both gone
overboard together, when the sudden wrenching of him (Magwitch) out of
our boat, and the endeavor of his captor to keep him in it, had capsized
us. He told me in a whisper that they had gone down fiercely locked in
each other’s arms, and that there had been a struggle under water, and
that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and swum away.

I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus told me.
The officer who steered the galley gave the same account of their going
overboard.

When I asked this officer’s permission to change the prisoner’s
wet clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the
public-house, he gave it readily: merely observing that he must take
charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the pocket-book
which had once been in my hands passed into the officer’s . He further
gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to London; but declined to
accord that grace to my two friends.

The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone
down, and undertook to search for the body in the places where it was
likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery seemed to me to
be much heightened when he heard that it had stockings on. Probably, it
took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out completely; and that may
have been the reason why the different articles of his dress were in
various stages of decay.

We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then Magwitch
was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert and Startop
were to get to London by land, as soon as they could. We had a doleful
parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch’s side, I felt that that
was my place henceforth while he lived.

For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away; and in the Hunted,
wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man
who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately,
gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a
series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to
Joe.

His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew on,
and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest him on the arm
I could use, in any easy position; but it was dreadful to think that
I could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt, since it was
unquestionably best that he should die. That there were, still living,
people enough who were able and willing to identify him, I could not
doubt. That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had
been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken
prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation
under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who
was the cause of his arrest.

As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind us,
and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told him how
grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake.

“Dear boy,” he answered, “I'm quite content to take my chance. I've seen
my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me."

No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side. No.
Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wemmick’s hint now.
I foresaw that, being convicted, his possessions would be forfeited to
the Crown.

“Lookee here, dear boy,” said he “It’s best as a gentleman should not be
knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me as if you come by chance
alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am swore to, for the
last o' many times, and I don’t ask no more."

“I will never stir from your side,” said I, “when I am suffered to be
near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!"

I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face away
as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound in his
throat,—softened now, like all the rest of him. It was a good thing
that he had touched this point, for it put into my mind what I might not
otherwise have thought of until too late,—that he need never know how
his hopes of enriching me had perished.